Digital lighting technologies, i.e., illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (“LEDs”), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g., red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Lamps and luminaires exist that provide users with limited capabilities to control emitted light with techniques other than operation of switches. For instance, a “clapper” enables a lamp to be controlled with sound, typically in the form of one or more claps from a user. Other lamps include touch-sensitive surfaces that may be at least partially capacitive. A user's touch may be detected based on a change in that capacitance, and light emitted by one or more light sources of the lamp may be altered based on the nature of the user's touch. However, such a lamp may require a custom luminaire designed to have an alterable capacitance. An antique luminaire with artistic and/or sentimental value may not be suitable for conversion into a touch-sensitive lamp. Additionally, a user may wish to control lighting by touching objects other than luminaires or lamps, such as a picture frame, a wall, a door knob, etc. Based on the foregoing, there is a need in the art to facilitate touch-based lighting control using various household objects and/or surfaces.